November Wrap Up

Well, I was waiting to have enough stuff to make a decent post about, then in the last few days I got caught up on a few things and now I have a lot to show. So let's get to it!

November has been an all over the place kind of month for me. The year is winding down and I'm really trying to make some last minute progress on a few projects that I skipped over this summer. I started off with Frosty Forest, and surprised myself with a quick finish on block #5. So here's how the whole thing looks now:

This won't be out again until February. I don't plan to finish it next year (you guys should know by now how I like to drag things out) but definitely the year after. Snowman's Cottage is up next, and those houses do take a while to stitch.

Next, I pulled out Jim Shore's 12 Days of Christmas, really cuz I was just in the mood for it, but I did want to try and finish block #4 this year. So here is my start on 4 Calling Birds:

This block has a ton of purple in it, which is really quite pretty. I don't get to stitch with dmc 550 very often. It's going to seem very bright with those greens and some deep reds coming up. This will be out again at Christmas, so hopefully I can finish this block this year. (Fingers crossed!)

I'm still a bit behind on Elizabeth Oliver by Moira Blackburn, so I worked on that for a few days and managed to finish of a section. Now the whole verse is done:

This is hard to get a good picture of. But I've just got the final section left for this row: the basket, another tall flowery plant and the border. This one always takes longer to stitch than I think, so it'll have to be a focus project in December.

Over the course of the year, I always pull out random projects to to work on outside of my rotation, but I only show them when I think it looks like something. I've managed some decent progress on my Supersized Awakening from HAED, though in the scheme of things, it's really nothing at all. But my last diagonal finished up about half of the first page, and it's looking really good:

This is only 2490 stitches so far (out of 622,377, but who's counting?) but it's taken me almost 32 hours to stitch. This is one of my first diagonal projects, and the first with so much confetti, so it's been a lot of learning in a short time. But I am getting faster and really understanding how I like to actually stitch it, like where to start and end my threads, etc. When I first started, I was only doing about 40 stitches an hour. Now I'm up to 140 to 160 stitches an hour, and the process has become much more enjoyable. Originally, I planned to do each page individually, but I think I'll start extending my diagonals across the first row, and perhaps into the second. I really want to stitch that orb thingy on top of the pillar, so I'll be doing the first two pages on the first and second row first.

Last but not least, I've made some really good progress on Luna this month, so much that I think I can finish another page by the end of the year:

Check out her wing! I really love how this is stitching up. For November, I finished off four columns and started the next pair, 4340 stitches in all. If you look really closely, you might be able to see the very tip of her shoulder curving down. So yes, this column will be her arm, and next will be her dress. I'm so excited!! I still have to rearrange furniture every time I work on her, but it's worth it. Hopefully I can keep up this pace in December. :)

Whew! That was a lot. It seems I always stitch a lot more at the end of the year, probably because it feels like a deadline is looming. I hope you all have a great stitchy month, and enjoy the holidays! Until next time!